The document discusses the impacts of greenhouse gases, primarily from human activities, on global warming, highlighting significant temperature increases predicted for the future. It warns of severe consequences, including altered weather patterns, rising sea levels potentially displacing populations, and challenges to agriculture and water resources. Experts emphasize the urgency of reducing emissions to mitigate these effects, despite uncertainties in predicting local climate changes.

4. sunlight
Ice
lncoming sunlight
Trapped
infrared
energy
Greenhouse gases

5. Greenhouse gene•
lndustry
gases accumulating in the at-
mosphere as by-products of
human industry and agricul-
ture- carbon dioxide,
mostly, but also methane,
nitrous oxide, ozone, and
chlorofluorocarbons-let in
the sun's warming rays but
don't Jet excess heat escape.
As a result, mean global tem-
perature has probably been
rising for decades. But the
rise has been so graduai that
it has been masked by the
much greater, and ordinary,
year-to-year swings in
world temperature.
Not anymore, said
Hansen. The 1980s bave al-
ready seen the four hottest
years on record, and 1988 is
almost certain to be batter
stili. Moreover, the seasonal,
regional, and atmospheric
pattems of rising tempera-
tures-greater warming in
winters than summers,
greater warming at high lati-
tudes than near the equator,
and a cooling in the strato-
sphere while the lower at-
mosphere is warmer-jibe
with what computer models
predict should happen with
greenhouse heating. And the
warming comes at a time
when, by rights, Earth
should actually be cooler
than norma!. The sun's radi-
ance has dropped slightly
since the 1970s, and dust
thrown up by recent vol-
canic eruptions, especially
that of Mexico's El Chichon
in 1982, should be keeping
some sunlight from reaching
~ the planet.
§ Even though most clima-
! tologists think Hansen's
~ claims are premature, they
g agree that warming is on the
~ way. Carbon dioxide levels
are 25 percent higher now
than they were in 1860, and
the atmosphere's burden of
greenhouse gases is ex-
pected to keep growing. By
the middle of the next cen-
tury the resulting warming
could boost global mean
temperatures from three to
nine degrees Fahrenheit.
That doesn't sound like
much, but it equals the tem-
perature rise since theend of
the last ice age, and the con-
sequences could be devastat-
ing. Weather pattems could
shift, bringing drought to
once fertile areas and heavy
rains to fragile deserts tbat
cannot handle tbem. As run-
off from melting glaciers in-
creases and warming seawa-
ter expands, sea level could
rise as much as six feet, in-
undating low-lying coastal
areas and islands. There
would be dramatic disrup-
tions ofagriculture, water re-
sources, fisheries, coastal ac-
tivity, and energy use.
"Average climate will cer-
tainly get warmer," says
Roger Revelle, an oceanogra-
pher and climatologist at the
University of California at
San Diego. "But what's more
serious is how many more
hurricanes we'll have, how
many more drougbts we'll
bave, how many days above
one hundred degrees." By
Hansen's reckoning, where
Washington now averages
one day a year over 100 de-
grees, it will average 12 such
scorchers annually by the
middle of the next century.
Comparable climate shifts
have happened before, but
over tens of centuries, not
tens of years. The unprece-
dented rapid change could
Sunlight warms the planet, which radiates heat as infrared
energy. Some light is reflected by clouds and ice; some heat is
trapped by clouds. For millennio the net effect has been a fairly
stable global temperature. Now C02 and other gases procluced
by industry, deforestation, and farming are trapping more
infrared energy, turning up Earth's thermostat.
accelerate the already high
rate of species extinction as
plants and animals fai! to
adapt quickly enough. For
the first time in history hu-
man:s are affecting the eco-
logica! balance of not just a
region but the entire world,
ali at once. "We're altering
the environment far faster
than we can possibly predict
the consequences," says
Stephen Schneider, a climate
modeler at the National Cen-
ter for Atmospheric Re-
search in Boulder, Colorado.
"This is bound to lead to
some surprises."
Schneider has been trying
to generate interest in the
greenhouse effect since the
early 1970s, although largely
unsuccessfully. Frightening
as the greenhouse effect is,
the task of curbing it is so
daunting that no one has
been willing to take the nec-
essary steps as long as there
was even a tiny chance that
the effect might not be real.
Since greenhouse gases are
chiefly the result of human
industry and agriculture, it is
not an exaggeration to say
that civilization itself is the
ultimate cause of global
warming. That doesn't mean
nothing can be done; only
that delaying the effects of
global warming by cutting
down on greenbouse-gas
emissions will be tremen-
dously difficult, both techni-
cally and politically. Part of
the problem is that predict-
ing exactly what will happen
to the !oca! climate, region
by region, is a task tbat's stili
beyond the power of even
the most sophisticated com-
puter mode!.
Some parts of tbe world
could actually benefit from
climate change, while others
could suffer tremendously.
But for the foreseeable fu-
ture the effects will be uncer-
tain. No nation can pian ~n
benefiting, and so, says
DISCOVER • OC10BER • 1988 53

6. Schneider, we m1ust ali
"hedge our global bE!ts," by
reducing emissions oJ green-
house gases. "The longer we
wait to take action," he says,
"and the weaker the action,
the larger the effect ;md the
more likely that it will be
negative." Says met:eorolo-
gist Howard Ferguson, assis-
tant deputy minister of the
Canadian Atmospheriic Envi-
ronment Service, "Ali the
greenhouse scenarlios are
consistent. These mumbers
are rea!. We have to start be-
having as if this is going to
happen. Those whot advo-
cate a program comsisting
only of additional research
are missing the boat."
While the greenhouseef-
fect threatens t'o make
life on Earth miserabtle, it is
also part of the reaso!O !ife is
livable in the first platee. For
at least the Jast 100,0010 years
atmospheric carbon dioxide,
naturally generated al!ld con-
sumed by animals and
plants, was in rough equilib-
rium, at a couple of hundred
parts per million. Without
this minute but criticai trace
to hold in heat, the globe's
mean temperature would be
in the forties inste.ad of a
comfortable 59 degre,es. The
amount of carbon dioxide
has risen aod fallen a bit, co-
inciding with the spread and
retreat of glaciers as i~ce ages
have come and gone. But
unti! the Industriai Revolu-
tion; aunospheric carbon di-
oxide levels never rose above
a manageable 280 parts per
rnillion.
Then, beginning early in
the nineteenth century, the
burning of fossi! fueiB, espe-
cially coal, took off. By 1900,
c.arbon dioxide levels in the
atmosphere had begun to
rise steadily, reaching 340
parts per million last year.
Levels of the other green-
house gases have also risen.
54 utSCOVlR · o c to arw · t9a8
Methane, for example, is
generated primarily by bac-
terial decomposition of or-
ganic matter- particularly
in such places as landfills,
flooded rice paddies, and the
guts of c.attle and terrnites-
and by the burn.ing of wood.
Methane concentration in
the atmosphere has grown
steadily as Earth's human
population has grown, rising
one percent a year over the
last decade. Levels of chlo-
rofluorocarbons, which are
used as refrigerants, as
cleaning solvents, and as
raw materials for making
plastic foam, have climbed 5
percent annually.
The amount of nitrous ox-
ide in the atmosphere has
quickly increased as well,
with about a third of the total
added by human activity-
much of that ernitted by ni-
trogen-based fertilizers, and
half of that from just three
nations: China, the Soviet
Union, and the United
States. This gas is also re-
leased by the burning of coal
and other fossi! fuels, includ-
ing gasoline. And ozone,
which forms a beneficiai
shield against ultraviolet ra-
diation when high in the
stratosphere, is an efficient
greenhouse gas when it ap-
pears at airliner altitudes-
as it increasingly does, since
it too is a by-product of fossi!
fuel burning.
All these gases are far
more efficient at absorbing
infrared energy (the invis-
ible radiation that ordinarily
carries Earth's excess heat
into space) than is carbon
dioxide. lndeed, atmo-
spheric chemists have esti-
mated that the combined
warming effect of these trace
gases will soon equal or ex-
ceed the effect from carbon
dioxide. And even as growth
has slowed in the industrial-
ized nations, the Third
World is rushing full tilt into
CHAI&III CLIMES
A computer projects changes in July temperatures through 2029.
White means no change. Blue shows cooling; yellow, orange,
and red show increasing heat-from two to nine de~1rees.
development. Ali told, bi!- streams and vortices and ilions of tons of greenhouse ocean currents swirling ~
gases enter the atmosphere around the globre and gov- ~
each year. erning the weather stili con- ~
The big question is, given
the inexorable buildup
of these gases-a growth
that even the most spirited
optimists concede can only
be slowed, not stopped-
what will the specific effects
be? It's hard to say, bec.ause
the relationship between
worldwide climate and local
weather is such a complex
phenomenon to begin with.
The chaotic patterns of jet
found meteorologists; in ;;;
fact, weather mo1re than two ~
weeks in the future is ~
thought by some rto be inher- g
ently unpredictabtle. ~
So far, the best answers ~
have come from computer li'
models that simulate the ~
workings of the atmosphere. ~
Most divide the atmosphere S
into hundreds of boxes, each ~
of which is repr,esented by ~
mathematical eqruations for ~
wind, temperature, mois- ~

7. THE GREENHOUSE GASES
O Methane
D Carbon dioxide
1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s
This graph shows fra ctions of global warming caused by various gases. The biggest problem is
now C02, but CFCs, methane, a nd nitrous oxide may cause just a s much warming by 2010.
ture, incoming radiation,
outgoing radiation, and the
like. Each mathematical box
is linked to its neighbors, so
it can respond to changing
conditions with appropriate
changes ofits own. Thus, the
mode! behaves the way the
world does-albeit at a very
rough scale. A typical mode!
divides the atmosphere verti-
cally into nine layers and
horizontally into boxes that
are several hundred miles on
a side.
Climate modelers can play
with "what if" scenarios to
see how the world would re-
spond to an arbitrary set of
conditions. Severa! years
ago, for example, computer
models were used to bolster
the theory of nuclear winter,
which concluded that smoke
and dust lofted into the at-
mosphere in a nuclear war
would block sunlight and
dangerously chill the planet.
To study the greenhouse ef-
fect, climatologists first used
models to simulate current
conditions, then instantly
doubled the amount of car-
bon dioxide in the atmo-
sphere. The computer was
allowed to run until condi-
tions stabilized at a new
equilibrium, and a map
could be drawn showing
changes in temperature, pre-
cipitation, and other factors.
But Hansen's latest simu-
lations-the ones he used in
his startling congressional
testimony-are more sophis-
ticated. In them he added
carbon dioxide to the atmo-
sphere stepwise, just as is
happening in the real world.
The simulations, begun in
1983, took so much com-
puter time that they were
not completed and pub-
lished unti! this surnrner.
Even the best climate
mode!, however, has to over-
simplify the enormous com-
plexity of the rea! atmo-
sphere. One problem is the
size of the boxes. The mode!
used at the National Center
for Atmospheric Research,
for example, typically uses
boxes 4.5 degrees of latitude
by 7 degrees of longitude-
about the size of the center's
home state of Colorado-
and treats them as uniform
masses of air. While that's
inherently inaccurate-the
real Colorado contains such
fundamentally different fea-
tures as the Rocky Moun-
tains and the Great Plains-
using smaller boxes would
take too much computing
power.
Another problem is that
modelers must estimate the
influence of vegetation, ice
and snow, soil moisture, ter-
rain, and especially clouds,
which reflect lots of sun-
light back into space and
also hold in surface heat.
"Clouds are an important
factor about which little is
known," says Schneider.
"When I first started looking
at this in 1972, we didn't
know much about the feed-
back from clouds. We don't
know any more now than
we did then."
So it is not surprising that
while the more than a
dozen major global climate
models in use around the
world tend to agree on the
broadest phenomena, they
differ wildly when it comes
to regional effects. And, says
Robert Cess, a climate mod-
eler at the State University of
New York at Stony Brook,
"The smaller the scale, the
bigger the disagreement.''
That makes it extremely
hard to get national and local
governments to take action.
Says Stephen Leatherman,
director of the Laboratory for
Coastal Research at the Uni-
versity of Maryland, "Unless
you can put something
down on paper and show the
effects on actual locations-
even actual buildings-then
it's just pie in the sky."
There are, however, some
consequences of a warming
Earth that will be universal.
Perhaps the rnost obvious is
a rise in sea leve!. "If we went
ali out to slow the warming
trend, we might stall sea
leve! rise at three to six feet,"
says Robert Buddemeier of
Lawrence Liverrnore Na-
tional Laboratory, who is
studying the irnpact of sea-
level rise on coral reefs. "But
that's the very best you
could hope for." And a six-
foot rise, Buddemeier pre-
dicts, would be devastating.
It would, for one thing,
render alrnost ali low cor-
al islands uninhabitable.
"Eventually," Buddemeier
says, "a lot of this rea! estate
is going to go underwater."
For places like the Marshall
Islands in the Pacific, the
Maldives off the west coast
of India, and some Carib-
bean nations, this could
mean nothing less than na-
tional extinction. "You're re-
ally looking at a potential
refugee problem of unprece-
dented dimensions," says
Buddemeier. "In the past,
people have run away from
famine or oppression. But
they've never been physi-
cally displaced from a coun-
try because a large part of it
has disappeared."
Coastal regions of conti-
nents or larger islands will
also be in harm's way, par-
ticularly towns or cities built
on barrier islands and the
fertile flat plains that typi-
cally surround river deltas.
Bangladesh, dominated by
the Ganges-Brahmaputra-
Meghna Delta, is the classic
case, says Buddemeier. "It's
massively populated, ach-
ingly poor, and something
like a sixth of the country is
going to go away."
Egypt will be in similar
DISCOVER • OClOBE; • fQSS 55

8. trouble, according to a study
by economist James Broadus
and severa! colleagues at
Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution. Like the Ganges-
Brahmaputra-Meghna, the
soft sediments of the Nile
Delta are subsiding. Given
even an intermediate sce-
nario for sea-level rise by the
year 2050, Egypt could lose
15 percent of its arable land,
land that currently houses
14 percent of its population
and produces 14 percent of
its gross domestic product.
One mitigating factor for
some coastal nations that are
still developing, such as Be-
lize and Indonesia, is that
they generally have commit-
ted fewer resources to the
coastline than their devel-
oped counterparts--Austra-
Jia, for example, or the
United States, with such vul-
nerable cities as Galveston
and Miami. "Developed
countries have billions in-
vested in a very precarious,
no-win situation," Budde-
meier says. "The less devel-
oped countries will have an
easier time adapting."
Indeed, the impact on
coastal cities in developed
countries may be enormous.
The Urban Institute, a non-
partisan think tank, is com-
pleting a study for the En-
vironmental Protectìon
Agency on what a three-foot
sea leve! rise would doto Mi-
ami. Miami is particularly
vulnerable. Not only is it a
coastal city, but it is nearly
surrounded by water, with
the Atlantic to the east, the
Everglades to the west, and
porous limestone beneath-
"one of the most permeable
aquifers in the world," says
William Hyman, a senior re-
search associate at the insti-
tute. "The aquifer in Miami
isso porous that you'd actu-
ally have to build a dike
down one hundred fifty feet
beneath the surface to keep
water from welling up." In
an unusually severe storm
nearby Miami Beach would
be swept by a wall of water
up to 16 feet above the cur-
rent sea level.
Storms are an even greater
danger to Galveston, which
Leatherman has studied ex-
tensively. Given just a cou-
ple of feet in sea-level rise, a
moderately bad hurricane,
of the type that occurs about
once every ten years, would
have the destructive impact
of the type of storm that oc-
curs once a century. And
Galveston is typical of a
whole range of resort areas
on the eastern and Gulf
coasts, such as Atlantic City,
New Jersey ("almost the
whole New Jersey coast, re-
ally," says Leatherman);
Ocean City, Maryland; and
Myrtle Beach, South Caro-
lina. "The point is, al1 these
cities have been built on
low-lying sandy barrier is-
lands, mostly with eleva- ~
tions no higher than ten feet g
above sea leve!," Leather- ~
man says. "Just a small rise ~
in sea leve! will result in a lot i
of complications." ~
Even as cities become ~
more vulnerable to moderate g
storms, the intensity of hur- §
ricanes may increase dra- ~
matically, says Kerry Eman- ..,
uel, a meteorologist at MIT. iHurricane intensity is linked ~
to the temperature of the sea §
surface, Emanuel explains. g
According to his models, if 3
the sea warms to predicted ~
levels, the most intense hur- i
A projected sea-level rise of just a few feet would cause even a
small hurricane to inundate low-lying coastal cities such as
Galveston and Texas City (illustration). Galveston will
experience much more serious flooding than that caused by
Hurricane Alida in 1983 (photo).
56 DISCOVER • OCT06ER · 1988
~ CJ 30-60 percent drier
j c:::J 20 percent drier
~<>c r-l
~
L___j 1Opercent drier
~ D Nochange
6
~ CJ 20-100 percent weHer
lc:::J

9. When co2 il doubled, one
model of changes in summer soil
moisture shows a wetter India
and a bone-dry Midwest.
ricanes will be 40 to 50 per-
cent more severe than the
most intense hurricanes of
the past SO years.
James Titus, director of
the Environmental Protec-
tion Agency's Sea Leve! Rise
Project, says communities
will have two choices: build
walls or get out of the way.
For cities such as New York
e: or Boston the answer may
~ well be to build walls. But for
~ most other coastal regions,
~ picking up and moving may
! work out better. One of the
~ first examples of a regional
~ government making a regu-
lD lation based on the green-
~ house effect took piace in
~ Maine last year. The state
§approved regulations allow-
i ing coastal development
~ with the understanding that
gif sea leve! rises enough to
!inundate a property, the
~ property will revert to na-
l ture, with the owner footing
~ the bill for dismantling or
~ moving structures.
The Maldives would be swamped by a rising sea .
Another worldwide con-
sequence of global warming
is increased precipitation:
warmer air wiU mean more
evaporation of ocean water,
more clouds, and an overall
rise in rain and snow of be-
tween 5 and 7 percem. But
it won't be evenly distrib-
uted. One climate mode! at
Princeton University's Geo-
physical Fluid Dynamics
Laboratory predicts that cen-
trai India will have doubled
precipitation, while the cen-
ters of continents at rniddle
latitudes-the midwestern
United States, for example-
will actually have much
drier summers than they
have now (this summer's
drought could, in other
words, be a foretaste). Some
arid areas, including south-
ern California and Marocco,
will have drier wimers; and
winters are when such areas
get most of theii precipita-
tion. Moreover, the effect
may be self-perpetuating:
drier soil, says Syukuro
Manabe, the climatologist
who developed the mode!,
le.ids to even hotter air.
The changes could be po-
litica! dynamite for nations
that dlrt!aùy argue ovt!r
water resources. A prime ex-
ampie is Egypt and Sudan,
both of which draw their
lifeblood from the north-
flowing Nile. Sudan has
been trying to diverta bigger
share of the river's water;
but downstream, Egypt is
experiencing one of Africa's
DISCOVER • OCIOBER · 1988 57

10. lf atmospheric carbon dioxide levels double, the mountain snow that supplìes much of California's
water wili dwindle, creating winter floods and summer droughts.
fastest poputadon explo-
sions and will need every
drop of water it can get. A
string of droughts in the Su-
dan could make the conflict
far worse. The same situ-
ation occurs in many other
parts of the world.
Not ali the tensions will be
international. Within na-
tions, local effects of global
warming will cause interne-
cine fights for increasingly
scarce water. In the United
States, for example, western
states have long argued over
who owns what fraction of
the water in such rivers as
the Colorado. In California
42 percent of the water
comes from the Sacramento
and San Joaquin river ba-
sins, which are fed by runoff
from the Sierra Nevada and
58 01 >l OVH • OCTOSER · 1988
other mountain ranges.
Most of the water falls as
snow in the winter, which
melts in the spring to feed
the rivers, reservoirs, and
sublerranean aquifers. The
state's norma! strategy for
water management calls for
keeping the reservoirs low in
winter, 10 provide protection
against floods, and keeping
them as high as possible in
summer, 10 ensure an ade-
quale supply for the giam
farming operations in the
Centrai Valley (one of the
most productive agricultural
regions in the world) and for
arid southern Califorrua.
Peter Gleick of the Pacific
lnstitute for Studies in De-
velopment, Environment
and Security, in Berkeley,
California, has devised a
widely praised mode! that
predkts a dramatic disrup-
tion of the state's water sup-
ply in the event of global
warming, even if total
precipitation remains un-
changed. 1t focuses on the
Sacramento River basin,
which alone provides 30 per-
ceni of the state's water and
almost a1l the water for agri-
culture in the Central Valley.
According to the mode!,
higher temperatures will
mean that what falls in win-
ter will increasingly be rain,
not snow, and that more of
it will run off right away.
California may get the same
amount of total annua! run-
off, but the water-distribu-
tion system won't be able to
dea! with it. "California will
get the worst of ali possible
worlds-more flooding in
the winter, less available
water in the summer,"
Gleick says. "This will re-
verberate throughout the
state." San Francisco Bay
will feel a secondary effect.
As freshwater supplies
shrink in the summer,
seawater, which has already
infiltrated freshwater aqui-
fers beneath the low-lying
Sacramento Delta, will con-
tinue its push inland. Rising
sealevel willjustcornpound
the effect.
Food is another crucial re-
source that will be af-
fected by the global green-
house. Taken by itself, a rise
in atrnospheric carbon diox-
ide might not be so bad. For
many crops more carbon di-
oxide means a rise in the rate
ofphotosynthesis and, there-
fore, in growth; and with in-
creased carbon dioxide some
plants' use of water is more
efficient, according to stud-
ies done in conventional
glass greenhouses. Also, as
the planet gets warmer,
crops rnight be cultivated
farther north. But as usual,
things are not so simple. A
temperature rise of only 3.5
degrees in the tropics could
reduce rice production by
more than 10 percent.
In temperate regions also,
the picture is mixed. Cynthia
Rosenzweig, a researcher
based at Goddard, has been
using crop-growth computer
models to predict effects of
carbon dioxide buildup and
climate change on wheat,
the most widely cultivated
crop in the world. Plugging
in temperature changes de-
rived from the Goddard eli-
male mode!, Rosenzweig
tested a world with doubled ~
carbon dioxide levels. Be- ~
cause the GodJard mode! is ~
bad at predicting precipita- g
tion, she did separate runs ~
for norma! and dry condi- ~

11. tions. She found that in nor-
ma! years the wheat grew
better, thanks to the extra
carbon dioxide. But in dry
years there was a marked in-
crease in crop failures, be-
cause of excessive heat.
Given the likelihood that
heat waves and droughts are
increasing, she says, no one
should counton better yields
in years to come.
The nations most likely to
reap the benefits of warmer
clirnate are Canada and the
Soviet Union, much of
whose vast land area is too
cold for Jarge-scale crop cul-
tivation. There has even
been speculation that these
countries might go slowly on
controlling the greenhouse
effect, or even oppose such
contro!; anyone who has
spent the winter in Mos-
cow or Saskatoon would
be sorely tempted by the
prospect of better weather.
But again, atmospheric
scientists stress that no na-
tion can count on benefits.
"The models suggest that
ecologica! zones will shift
northward," says planetary
scientist Michael McElroy of
Harvard. "The southwestern
desert to the Grain Belt; the
Grain Belt to Canada. There
might be winners and losers
if this shift occurs slowly.
But suppose it shifts so fast
that ecosystems are unable
to keep up?" For example,
he says, there is a limit to the
distance that a forest can
propagate in a year. "If it is
unable to propagate fast
enough, then either we bave
l to come in and plant trees, or
§ else we'JJ see total devasta-
~ tion and the collapse of the
~ ecosystem."
~ According to Irving
f Mintzer, a senior associate
e; with the Energy and Climate
~ Project of tbe World Re-
~ sources lnstitute in Wash-
~ ington, there is another rea-
i!: son to be leery of projections
''Ca6fornia will gel the worst of
ali possible worlds-flooding in
winter, less water in summer.''
for regional agricultural
benefits. Just because cli-
matic conditions conducive
to grain cultivation move
north, that doesn't mean
that other conditions neces-
sary for agricultural super-
powerdom will be present.
Much of Canada, for exam-
ple, does not have the opti-
mum type of soil for growing
wheat and com.
Wildlife will suffer, too.
In much of the world,
wilderness areas are increas-
ingly hemmed in by devel-
opment, and when dimate
shifts, these fragile ecosys-
tems won't be able to shift
with it. Plants will suddenly
be unable to propagate their
seeds, and animals wiU have
no piace to go. Species in the
Arctic, such as caribou, may
lese vital migratory routes as
ice bridges between islands
melt.
In the United States the
greatest impact willlikely be
on coastal wetlands: the salt
marshes, swamps, and bay-
ous that are among the
world's most diverse and
productive natura! habitats.
James Titus of the Environ-
mental Protection Agency
estimates that a five-foot rise
in sea level-not even the
worst-case scenario-would
destroy between 50 and 90
percent of America's wet-
A satellite image of West Africa shows many fìres (white spots).
Five percent of Earth's surface burns each year.
lands. Under natural condi-
tions marshes would slowly
shift inland. But with levees,
condominiums, and other
man-made structures in the
way, they can't. The situ-
ation is worst in Louisiana,
says Titus, which has 40 per-
cent of U.S. wetlands (ex-
cluding those in Alaska);
much of the verdant Missis-
sippi River delta may well
vanish.
In many parts of the trop-
ics, low forests of mangrove
trees thrive in the shallow
waters along coastlines.
Their dense networks of
roots and runners are natu-
ral island-building systems,
trapping sediment and cush-
ioning the damaging effects
of tropical storms. But rising
sea levels will flood the man-
groves; the natural response
would be for them to shift
with the tide, spreading their
roots farther inland. But in
places where development
has encroached on the
shore, 1he mangrove forests
will feel the same squeeze
that will threaten marshes.
The only way to eliminate
the greenhouse problem
completely would be to
return 1he world to its pre-
industrial state. No one pro-
poses that. But researchers
agree that there is plenty that
can be done to at least slow
down the warming. Energy
conservation comes first: us-
ing less coal, finding more
efficient ways 10 use cleaner-
burning fossi! fuels, and tak-
ing a new look at nonfossil
alternatives, everything from
solar and geothermal energy
to-yes, even some environ-
mentalists are admitting it-
nuclear power.
Getting the world's f"rac-
tious nations to agree 10 a
program of remedial mea-
sures sounds extremely diffi-
cult, but Stephen Schneider
sees signs that it may not be
OISCOVfR · OCTOBfR · 1988 59

12. impossible. Schoeider was
one of more than 300 dele-
gates from 48 countries who
attended the International
Conference on the Changing
Atmosphere, which took
piace in Toronto, coinciden-
tally, just a week after
Hansen'scongressional testi-
mony. lt was, says Schnei-
der, the "Woodstock of
C02" (an obvious reference
to the "Woodstock of Phys-
ics" meeting held last year,
during whkb news of the
high-temperature supercon-
ductors exploded into the
public consciousness).
The meeting was the first
large-scale attempt to bridge
the gap between scientists
and policymakers on a wide
range of atmospheric prob-
lems, including not just the
greenhouse effect but also
acid rain and the depletion
of the protective layer of
ozone in the stratosphere.
Four days of floor debates,
pane! discussions, and
closed-door sessions pro-
duced an ambitious mani-
festo calling for, among
other things, the following:
• A 20 percent reduction
in carbon dioxide emissions
by industrialized nalions by
the year 2005, using a com-
bination of conservation ef-
forts and reduced consump-
tion of fossi! fuels. A SO
percent cut would eventu-
ally be needed to stabilize at-
mospheric carbon dioxide.
• A switch from coaJ or oil
to other fuels. Burning natu-
ra! gas, for example, pro-
duces half as much carbon
dioxide per unit of energy as
burning coal.
• Much more funding for
development of solar power,
wind power, geothermal
power, and the like, and ef-
forts to develop safe nuclear
power.
• Drastic reductions in de-
forestation, and encourage-
ment of forest replanting
60 OI~COVEP · OCTO!Hf" • 198H
The only way lo e&minate the
problem woulcl be lo return the
worlclto its preinclustrial state.
and restoration.
• The labeling of products
whose manufacture does not
harm tbe environment.
• Nearly complete elimi-
nation of the use of chloro-
fluorocarbons, or CFCs, by
the year 2000.
Of ali the anti-green-
house measures, the
last should prove easiest to
achieve. Although CFCs are
extremely persistent, re-
maining in the upper atrno-
sphere for decades, and aJ-
though they are 10,000 times
more efficient than carbon
diox:ide at trapping heat, the
process of controlling them
bas been under way for
years, for reasons having
nothing to do wìth the
greenhouse effect. Since the
early 1970s atrnospheric sci-
entists bave known tbat
CFCs could bave destructive
effects on ozone. CFCs were
banned from spray cans in
tbe United States and Can-
ada in the late 1970s, and the
appearance of a "hole" in
the ozone layer over Antarc-
tica in the early 1980s cre-
ated an internationaJ con-
sensus that CFCs must go.
Last year 53 nations crafted
an agreement that will cut
CFC production by SO per-
cent over the next decade;
the chemicals may well be
banned altogether by the
turn of the century.
CFCs are a speciaJ case,
however. Since they are en-
tirely man-made, and since
substitutes are available or
under development, contro!
is straightforward. "There
are only thirty-eight compa-
nies worldwide that produce
CFCs," says Pieter Win-
semius, former minister of
the environment of the
Netherlands. "You can put
them all in one room; you
can talk to them. But you
can't do that with the pro-
ducers of carbon dioxide--
all the world's utilities and
industries."
Also, there is a lack of ba-
sic informatico on the flow
of carbon dioxide and the
other greenhouse gases into
and out of the atmosphere
and biosphere. Just as one
example, there is no good es-
timate of how much carbon
dioxide, methane, and ni-
trous oxide are produced by
tires, both man-made and
naturally occurring. " We
need to better assess globaJ
biomass burning as a source
of greenhouse gases," says
Joel Levine of the NASA
Langley Research Center in
Hampton, Virginia. ''We
have to understand what
we're actually doing when
we burn tropical forests and
when we burn agricultural
stubble after harvest. We
don't know on a globaJ basis
what the contribution is."
Remarkably, the confer-
ence spurred some specific
promises from politicallead-
ers rather than just vague
platitudes. Standing before a
40-foot-wide photorealist
painting of a cloud-studded
skyscape, prime ministers
Brian Mulroney of Canada
and Gro Harlem Brundtland
of Norway pledged that their
countries will slow fossiJ fuel
use and forgive some Third
World debt, allowing devel-
oping countries to grow in
a sustainable way. Says
Schneider, "In the fifteen
years that l've been trying to
convince people of the
seriousness of the green-
house effect, this is the first
time l've seen a broad con-
sensus: First, there is a con-
sensus that action is not pre-
mature. Second, that so-
lutions have to occur on a
gJobaJ as well as a national
scale."
In the end, thegreatest ob-
stacle facing those who are
trying to slow the output of
greenhouse gases is the fun-
damental and pervasive na-
ture of the human activities
that are causing the prob-
lem: deforestation, in-
dustrialization, energy pro-
duction. As populations
boom, productivity must
keep up. And even as the de-
veloped nations of the world
cut back on fossil fuel use,
there will be no justifiable
way to prevent the Third
World (rom expanding its
use of coal and oil. How can
the developed countries ex-
pect that China, for example,
which has plans to doubleìts
coal production in the next
15 years in order to spur de-
velopment, will be willing or
even able to change course?
And then there is poverty,
which contributes to the
greenhouse effect by encour-
aging destruction of forests.
"Approximately seventy-
five percent of the deforesta-
tion occurring in the world
today is accounted for by
landless people in a desper-
ate search for food," says
José Lutzenberger, director
of the Gaia Foundation, an
influential Brazilian environ-
mental group. Commercia!
logging accounts for just l 5
percent of tropical forest loss
worldwide. Unfortunately
for the atmosphere and the
forests themselves, working
out an agreement with the
tropica1 timber industry will
be far easier than eliminat-
ing rural poverty.
Industrialized nations,
whlch created most of the
greenhouse problem, should
lead the way to finding solu-
tions, says State Department
official Richard Benedick,
who represented the United
States during negotiations

13. for cuts in CFCs and who
was a conference attendee.
The first priority, he says,
should be strong conserva-
tion efforts- an area in
which the United States lags
far behind such countries as
Japan. The effect of such
measures, Benedick feels,
can only be positive and the
cost is not great. "Certain
things make sense on their
own merits," he says. Tech-
nology can be transferred to
developing countries. In
some Third World nations a
partial solution can be as
simple as modernizing en-
ergy production and distri-
bution. Upgrading India's
electric-power distribution
system, Benedick says,
could double the effective
energy output of existing
coal-fired power plants.
Addressing the confer-
ence, Canadian minister of
energy Marcel Masse noted
that there is cause for opti-
mism. One need look no fur-
ther than the energy crisis of
a decade ago. From 1979 to
1985, thanks primarily to
conservation, substantial
cuts were made in the use of
fossi! fuels by industrialized
nations. Only since 1986 and
the current oil glut, said
Masse, has there been a re-
surgence in oil use and coal
burning.
Michael McElroy con-
cluded, "If we choose to take
on this chaUenge, it appears
that we can slow the rate of
~ change substantially, giving
i
us time to develop mecha-
nisms so that the cosi 10 soci-
ety and the damage to eco-
l systems can be minimized.
Ili We could alternatively dose
~ our eyes, hope for the best,
~ and pay the cost when the
~ bill comes due." O
Senior Editor Andrew C.
Revkin wrote about the Flor-
ida al/igator wars in fast
month'sissue.
OISCOVER • OCTOBER • 1988 61